March 18, 2004
Shaun McKinnon
The Arizona Republic

Winter breathes its last sweat-soaked gasp Friday, giving way to an already overheated spring and another year of drought across most of Arizona.

Officially, spring arrives at 11:49 p.m. Friday, but temperatures soared to unseasonably high levels Wednesday with a nearly record 89 degrees at Sky Harbor International Airport, 14 degrees above normal.

The heat wave is expected to intensify through the weekend, with highs nearing 95 by Sunday, the National Weather Service said.

Warm weather statewide has triggered an early snowmelt in the mountains.

The Salt River is nearing its peak runoff levels almost a month ahead of schedule and could begin to subside in a week. The Verde River is past its peak for the season.

"We are at the end of winter," said Larry Martinez, water-supply specialist for the Natural Resources Conservation Service, a federal agency. "Unless something huge happens, we probably have our water supply for the year."

That supply will fall well short of normal yet again, despite a series of storms in February and March.

• The Salt and Verde rivers, key sources of drinking water for the Valley, will produce only about 42 percent of normal runoff by June, Salt River Project officials said Wednesday. SRP's six reservoirs are in better shape than they were last year at this time but are still less than half full.

• The Colorado River, another important source of water for Arizona, fared better this winter and is forecast to produce about 88 percent of normal runoff, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said Wednesday. Drought-depleted Lake Powell will continue to struggle.

• Rural Arizona will again suffer the most from the weak winter. Farmers who rely on the San Carlos Reservoir will almost certainly face shortages this summer. Flagstaff and Williams will be forced to dip deeper into groundwater reserves; Flagstaff is already drilling new wells, anticipating only minimal help from Lake Mary.

"It's been kind of disappointing," said Charlie Ester, SRP's water-resources manager. "Short of a rare event, we've got as much snow as we're going to get on the watershed."

Although two late-season storms soaked the Valley, they left little in the mountains, Ester said.

For example, a storm that dumped over an inch of rain at Sky Harbor last month left only 0.08 of an inch on the Verde River watershed.

By SRP's count, this is the ninth year of the drought.

Although rainfall was above normal in 1998, Ester and other water experts now see that as an anomaly in an extended dry spell that dates to 1996.

The start of spring doesn't mean an end to rain or even mountain snows. Phoenix normally receives about 0.90 of an inch of rain in March and about 0.26 of an inch in April. But the high-pressure system responsible for this week's heat wave suggests to some climate experts the end of the rainy season.

"We'll have April still, and we could still get some snow flurries in the mountains," Martinez said.

"But one thing we know is you cannot get a storm or storms into Arizona in May and June."

On the Colorado River, which flows south from the mountains in Wyoming and Colorado, "March, April can be wet months," said Barry Wirth, a spokesman for the Bureau of Reclamation in Salt Lake City. "But right now, high pressure is building in the upper basin, and it's getting warm."

He said Lake Powell, already at 42 percent of capacity, will likely continue to drop for another four weeks, then begin to rebound as runoff from the mountains flows in through the Colorado. Although runoff is projected to exceed last year's by 2.6 million acre-feet, Powell has dropped so low this year, it probably won't recover to last year's levels. An acre-foot equals 325,851 gallons.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0318spring18.html